Tumbleweed ARM Updates Target Raspberry Pi Wireless and Virtual Machines

A Raspberry Pi losing its wireless connection and an ARM guest failing under QEMU may both run Tumbleweed, but they need different fixes. openSUSE's October 14 ARM update report separates those cases. It covers snapshots through October 11, with the kernel moving from 7.2.6 to 7.2.9 and QEMU reaching 11.1.2.

Find the hardware before choosing the package

For Raspberry Pi 3, 4 and 5, the report points to refreshed Cypress cyfmac43455 SDIO wireless firmware in kernel-firmware-brcm. A raspberrypi-firmware-dt update also corrects an SRAM-range regression. Those are useful leads for an affected physical board. Neither is a reason to change an unrelated machine just because it also uses an ARM processor.

The QEMU fixes concern emulation and virtualization. Version 11.1.2 rejects out-of-range FIQ source values in its emulated BCM2835 interrupt controller. It also corrects ARM register handling with the HVF and WHPX accelerators. Testing an emulated Pi cannot establish that the wireless chip on a real Pi works; the reverse comparison is no better.

openSUSE's snapshot table provides a useful ordering:

• September 30: Raspberry Pi firmware changes and binutils 2.47.
• October 3: NetworkManager 1.58.1 and Mesa 26.2.4.
• October 7: kernel 7.2.9 and additional ARM fixes.
• October 11: QEMU 11.1.2 and libvirt 12.8.0.

A system that has not reached a particular snapshot will not necessarily have its packages. Check the installed versions before comparing results from two computers described only as “Tumbleweed ARM.”

Use the symptom to narrow the test

NetworkManager 1.58.1 fixes WPA3 auto-connection and Bluetooth NAP normalization. The kernel 7.2.9 entry includes validation of malformed CLC firmware records in the MediaTek mt7921 driver. A failure to reconnect to a WPA3 network and a driver handling bad firmware records are separate problems, despite both involving networking.

Write down the failing task before updating: reconnecting to the same access point, negotiating the same Bluetooth connection, or booting the same guest with the same accelerator. Repeat that task afterwards. Changing the network and the software at once makes it harder to identify which change helped.

Our earlier desktop Tumbleweed report covered a different package selection. Here, the ARM hardware and snapshot dates are the useful additions. Before installing on another board, use the report's ARM support resources to check that device's image and support status. New instruction support in binutils is not a promise that every ARM board can run the same image.